The Ducks at Downers Grove
by frozen-delight
Summary: No matter how much he looked like the carefree Sammy from his dreams, the one who'd been rolling around in the grass with the awkward grace of a giant octopus baby, the one who'd grinned impishly when Dean spit out his first mouthful of ice-cream on tasting that the topping wasn't chocolate sauce but BBQ, the Sam sitting beside his bed no longer was that little brother. 4x16 Coda


**Disclaimer:** I only own my enthusiasm for this marvellous show. No copyright infringement intended.

**A/N: **A Birthday Fic for my wonderful beta and friend **canonisrelative**.

Unbetaed. Apologies for any mistakes. Especially for all un-Americanisms.

Set at the end of 4x16 "On the head of a pin". Basically because I needed to work through my S4 feelings and felt some sort of explanation was necessary of how Dean went from "I can't do this" to "I'm the one who's supposed to do this". Also, I can never say no to a bit of hospital bedside schmoop.

Thanks for reading - please enjoy!

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He'd been dreaming of ducks.

Ironic, that.

After all those nights where Lilith or Alastair had haunted him (lately sometimes Sam, too, though that wasn't a thing he was ready to admit to himself yet), he'd now been dreaming of the ducks in Downers Grove, never mind that only the previous day he'd found out and endured enough to give him nightmares for the rest of his life.

There was nothing special about the ducks in Downers Grove or the day that Dean had made their acquaintance – it had been one of the last warm and sunny days of that summer, Dad had been away on a hunt and Sam and he had chilled out at the park, fooling around, sunbathing, eating ice-cream.

Since hunting things and saving people seemed to be part of their genetic make-up, they'd even stumbled across a bit of action in this entirely ordinary, civilian setting when a little child of maybe three waited for the one second its mother's attention was elsewhere to make its way towards the gleaming green lake.

Seeing this, Sam and Dean both sprinted towards the child, Sam a little more quickly; he did have longer legs, after all. Sam reached the shore of the lake before the child managed to do more than dip its feet into the water and scooped it up in his arms before it could come to any harm. However, this was not the closing act in the little lakeside drama, because a couple of ducks which had so far been padding along peacefully by the lake interpreted Sam storming towards them as a menace and decided to attack him with clicking beaks and flapping wings. Had Dean previously been too slow to save the little child from drowning, he now at least obtained the satisfaction of defending his brother against a battalion of angry ducks.

Later, Sam would insist that he hadn't needed Dean's help at all, he'd had everything under control, and the ducks had never been a threat to _him_, since, unlike Dean, he was _a good deal_ taller. A little bit of wrestling in the grass and a little more laughing followed.

It had been a good day.

The next morning, Dad had no sooner returned from whatever job he'd been working on than that Sam picked a fight with him, announcing that he wanted to go to college. Needless to say, that hadn't been part of Dean's dreamscape, not really, and he chose not to remember it upon waking, either.

As he slowly came back to consciousness, the images of a hot, burning sun reflected in shallow green water, of Sam's flashing dimples and of ruffled up feathers everywhere gradually slipped to the corners of his mind, where dull pain throbbed and swallowed them up listlessly. The throbbing was faint and slightly irregular, subdued by a strong dose of painkillers, no doubt. Overall a bearable level of pain. Little more than a breezy whisper. But a breezy whisper that, as the last remnants of sleep left him, sounded more and more like rasping taunts of _And it is written that the first seal shall be broken..._

Dean opened his eyes.

'Heya,' a soft voice said next to him.

Sam was sitting at his bedside, looking ridiculously big in the plastic chair he occupied, his face white and young with worry, his hair flopping around his head in an endearing chaos of knots and snarls. It made Dean itch to run his fingers through it and to crack a joke along the lines _If you insist on having a girl's hair, Sammy, you need to take good care of it like a girl, too_. But his arms felt too heavy to lift and the teasing words got stuck somewhere between his sore throat and tired soul.

No matter how much he looked like the carefree Sammy from his dreams, the one who'd been rolling around in the grass with the awkward grace of a giant octopus baby, the one who'd grinned impishly when Dean spit out his first mouthful of ice-cream on tasting that the topping wasn't chocolate sauce but BBQ, the Sam sitting beside his bed no longer was that little brother. No, this Sam was the one who secretly crept out to meet Ruby and used his freakish mind powers to exorcise demons. Or to kill them.

Dean shuddered.

Sam had killed Alastair. Cas had told him. Where not even the angels had been able to accomplish anything, his little brother had succeeded, snapping Alastair's neck as though he were nothing more than a cheap plastic doll.

Dean rather resented Cas for having told him at all. He'd been unconscious, he hadn't witnessed any of it. He would happily have believed for the rest of his days that the angel had saved him a second time from Alastair's sinister grip. Why couldn't Cas keep his trap shut? It wasn't like the angels were all for caring and sharing on an average day. Hell, they loved making a big secret of everything of importance, leaving Dean to blunder through each and every task they set him. Would one more secret have been too much to ask?

'Are you okay?' Sam asked, sounding worried.

Dean swallowed, banishing all thoughts of Sam's demon-killing abilities to the back of his head. Sam was there. After everything that had happened, he was still there. That ought to be enough, right?

'I broke the first seal,' he said quietly. 'How's that okay?'

'What?' Sam's hand shot up to clutch at Dean's arm, but he pulled it back halfway, as though unsure if his touch would be welcome. 'That's not true,' he insisted, eyes wide and brows moving ferociously. In simpler days, when hell, the Apocalypse, murderous demons and manipulative angels hadn't all been bustling around between them, Dean would have teased him that they'd pop out of his face and take a walk on their own if he wasn't careful. Now joking grew more and more difficult. And those goddam painkillers didn't help any either. 'It wasn't you. Why should it have been you? Don't let them lay all the blame for this on you.'

Dean wasn't quite sure who he was speaking of, Alastair or the angels. Maybe both.

'No, it's true. When I picked up the knife down there… that was the first seal. And I broke it.'

'But you didn't know.'

'What difference does that make?'

'You didn't mean to break it. You couldn't have known.'

'No, I couldn't. But I knew that what I was doing was bad,' Dean said more viciously than he'd intended. Because this sounded so damn close to Sam not just making excuses for Dean's actions, but also for his own. 'That should've been enough to stop me.'

Sam didn't reply anything, but looked stubbornly back at Dean, refusing to back down. In Dean's opinion, he was definitely asking for a colourful bruise in the face and an even more colourful lecture on why what he was doing was just wrong, wrong, wrong, but since Dean felt too exhausted to fight it out on the spot, that would have to wait till he'd been released from the hospital.

So Dean confined himself to a tired glare back at his brother and continued tonelessly, 'Cas said – because I started it, I have to finish it too.'

'Well screw him,' Sam replied angrily. 'They're asking too much of you, Dean. You don't have to do this.'

Dean wanted to make a sarcastic retort, something like, _What, you want us to call off the frigging Apocalypse? What should we do instead? Throw a pool party in LA with a crowd of hot chicks and martinis? Seriously cool idea, dude._ But somehow he couldn't quite get the words out.

'It's okay,' Sam said meanwhile. 'I'm here. You don't have to do this. Just let me take care of it. I've got this. I can do this. I won't let you down, not this time. You can trust me. Okay? Please, Dean, just let me, just once.'

Hearing this, Dean really wished his brother had been suggesting martinis and hot chicks at a pool instead. Anything rather than this deadly focus on the task ahead. Wistfully, he remembered the days when he'd had to drag a grumbling Sam along to a hunt. They now seemed like a distant, drug-induced dream.

The worst thing was how sincere Sammy looked and sounded right then and there. Suddenly Dean found it impossible to differentiate between the boy in his dreams who'd patted the child in his arms on the head, muttering soothing nonsense like _It's okay. I've got you. Everything's going to be all right_,and the Sam sitting next to him who earnestly pleaded with Dean to let him help.

Part of Dean felt tempted to lie back and close his eyes and let Sam take care of everything. Sam was capable. He'd shown that. But letting him wasn't the same as letting him put BBQ sauce on Dean's ice cream. Letting him would mean betraying the Sammy with the cheeky, dimpled smiles, the dirty pranks, the affectionate jabs and the sky-high ideals, who was still inside him, despite Azazel, Ruby and all the lies. And that could never be.

Dean would have to put his poker face back on. He'd have to remind himself how to joke and how to threaten, how to let nothing touch him and to strike everything that came his way. He'd have to pretend to be strong, even try to be strong. Strong for Sammy. He'd started this mess, he'd finish it. As long as that meant that Sammy didn't have to.

By the time Dean finally reached this conclusion, Sam was staring at his hands, his jaw a hard line, and an uncomfortable silence hung in the disinfected, white-washed air between them.

'Do you remember the ducks in Downers Grove?' Dean asked eventually, just to say something to break the silence.

Sam's head jerked up and his mouth twitched, briefly, violently, before his face settled into the bland, unreadable mask that Dean had grown to detest so over the last couple of months. 'No,' he said flatly and lowered his eyes back to his hands. This time, Dean really had no idea why he was lying.


End file.
